Twenty-one year mission workers return to U.S.

People from tiny villages and sprawling urban centers have a new lease on life due to the ministry of the Lindell Detweiler family. One of these, Thandi Gumbi, coordinator for Breakthru Community Action in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, said that she spoke for many when she paid tribute to the Lindell Detweilers.

“They are the most genuine people,” Gumbi said. “They formed relationships with people that have lasted. They adjusted to our country. They hosted young and old in their home and visited our homes to show the love of Christ.”

Gumbi said that the Lindell Detweiler family was special in that each member participated in ministry. Nathan, Annika and Lydia, the Lindell Detweiler children, were leaders, along with their South African peers, in children’s clubs and teen activities.

“They are so missed for that,” Gumbi said.

Having three children born in three different countries is one indication of how Christine and Phil Lindell Detweiler have followed where God led. In 1991, they began their ministry with Mennonite Board of Missions, a predecessor agency of Mennonite Mission Network, in Liberia. Two years into this assignment, they had to break curfew and negotiate with armed soldiers at checkpoints when Christine went into labor with Nathan, their first child, in the middle of the night.

Shalom is a constant theme throughout the Lindell Detweilers’ various ministries. They define shalom as “salvation in every aspect of life.” In war-ravaged Liberia, that meant working with the Christian Health Association of Liberia to organize the transportation of relief supplies from ports in neighboring Ivory Coast to areas in Liberia where people were in desperate need. In the more stable countries of Benin, where they served from 1994-2005, and South Africa, 2005-2011, the shalom they promoted took the form of community development.

When the Lindell Detweilers tell a story that encapsulates their 21 years of community development ministry with Mennonite Mission Network and Mennonite Board of Missions, they tell a more peaceful story about a small village, Madengbé, tucked in the hills of the tiny West African country of Benin.   

“Because of the work we did in facilitating the creation of a village health schema, the people of Madengbé believed that they could do things together as a community, and they continue to undertake community projects,” Phil Lindell Detweiler said.

Before the Madengbé training session, the Lindell Detweilers initially spent time in several villages in Benin building relationships, helping communities identify their needs, and assisting in the creation of a development committee. Those communities who identified health concerns as their greatest priority chose men and women to be trained in first aid and midwifery.

The two-week session in Madengbé began with pulling the desks out of the school room and arranging them under the mango trees, because the indoor temperature was above 100 degrees.

“The eight men and eight women were scared to death by the prospect of studying health issues,” Christine Lindell Detweiler said. “Most of them had one or two years of formal schooling and little self-confidence in this area.”

However, with the help of images, symbols, and hands-on activities, the village health workers became excited by what they learned. They were ready for the next month of their training, which had them working alongside nurses and midwives in maternities. When they returned to their home communities, these village health workers were able to reduce the incidence of maternal and infant mortality.


Thandi Gumbi, coordinator or Breakthru Community Action — the community development association of Breakthru Church International, and Christine Lindell Detweiler, a member of BCA and Mennonite Mission Network worker. Photo by Ryan Miller.

“The village health workers who had come with fear and trembling were transformed into self-confident leaders,” Christine Lindell Detweiler said. “I’m full of awe when I see that kind of change in somebody’s life.”

Over the years, the people of Madengbé have worked with the government to upgrade their small health outpost into a clinic. With this success, they attracted the interest of another nongovernmental organization to help them build an aquaculture pond for fish, a reliable source of protein. Through a process of empowerment, the people of Madengbé were saved from accepting disease and hunger as their lot in life.

“For me, what happened in Madengbé is affirming,” Phil Lindell Detweiler said. “We’ve had our share of failures. Unless you’re totally delusional in life and in missions, you have plenty of failures. It’s just that missionaries are not supposed to talk about their failures.”

Phil Lindell Detweiler described how the work in Madengbé grew from the ashes of a regional, interdenominational community health program – the Lindell Detweilers’ first effort in central Benin that was suffocated due to leadership problems.

“Working with [the Lindell Detweiler family] has been such a testimony,” said Thandi Gumbi, who worked closely with them in South Africa to lay a solid foundation for Breakthru Community Action, a ministry of Breakthru Church International.

“The connections that they developed are still so relevant to us. We have seen the children that have been impacted by their ministry develop into great leaders,” Gumbi said. “These are children who were at risk of exploitation, human trafficking, and contracting HIV.”

The Lindell Detweilers say that much of what happened in their ministry was not foreseen or orchestrated.

“We often played some part in birthing these programs, but then, local people took the idea and ran with it and succeeded in finding what God wanted to happen in Dassa [Benin] or Philipstown  [South Africa] or wherever, and joined themselves to it,” Phil Lindell Detweiler said.

The Lindell Detweiler family is following a similar strategy as they take up residence in the United States. They are looking for where God is at work and then joining their community- building skills and experience to that ministry.

They are settling into Missio Dei, an intentional Mennonite community in Minneapolis, Minn. Missio Dei members seek to center their lives on Jesus, and practice hospitality through worship, meals, and a place in their homes for the homeless. When the weather permits, Missio Dei’s Hospitality Train pulls into town on Saturday afternoons. Bike trailers loaded with prepared food,  fresh produce, and cooking equipment attract a spontaneous community, especially folks on the edges of society, who work together to prepare some of the food and share the resulting feast. Sometimes, musicians join the celebration.

“Missions can be done in a way that affirms people’s culture and affirms life in Christ and holds those two things together,” Phil Lindell Detweiler said. “Those two things should be in tension in every culture. So, whether I am trying to understand the prevailing norms of my culture in the United States in light of God’s word, or whether I’m doing that in Benin or South Africa, is relatively irrelevant.”

###

Mennonite Mission Network, the mission agency of Mennonite Church USA, leads, mobilizes and equips the church to participate in holistic witness to Jesus Christ in a broken world. Media may contact Andrew Clouse at andrewc@mmnworld.net, 574-523-3024 or 866-866-2872, ext. 23024.